Collusion
by rynthewin
Summary: Loaded with extensive war-era content and thoroughly researched, Rita Skeeter's edition of the memoir of the infamous Hermione Krum might once and for all solve the mystery of her allegiance.
1. A Note from the Editor

AN: Harry Potter does not belong to me and I make no money off of this. No trigger warnings, except Rita using an ableist slur.

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><p>It cannot be denied that one of Britain's darkest moments in history was during the terrifying war waged by the Dark Lord and his followers, the Knights of Walpurgis. Those old enough to remember discuss that time, despite its short length, as like a nightmare. No one ever knew who would die next, who to trust, who might be threatened, if someone they loved might just vanish, or if they themselves might one day end up with a wand pointed at them, a black tattoo with a skull and a snake dark on the wand holder's arm. By the end of the war, one in six witches and wizards in Britain were dead or missing and presumed dead. Even now, many years later, we are still recovering from the losses of family, friends, and potential witches and wizards that might have been born and thrived in our beautiful world.<p>

Our world will never completely be able to hide the scar of the terrors these witches and wizards wrought on our world, and no amount of imprisonments, Dementor's Kisses, seizures of property, and house arrests will ever be able to give justice to the innocent witches and wizards harmed. So many looked back on the destruction and desperately asked why, seeking answers through the paltry records that were not filed away in the Unspeakable's office. I am very pleased to present my expanded version of Hermione Krum's book written for her family. While her wishes had been for her records and items to pass among her relatives and not the general public, Ministry Edict 364 requires that any potential documentation relating to the war and Knights of Walpurgis must be put in Ministry care. I was very fortunate to convince a dear friend to let me see this top-secret piece of history.

This is a very personal account of one of the war's most infamous Order members—at the beginning named Hermione Granger, then Hermione Riddle, who claims to have been working for the Order but was known to be intimately close, and eventually married, to _him_. Post-war trials gave away by Knight of Walpurgis testimonies that she was involved and planned some of the most devastating battles and massacres of the war. As more and more of those involved pass on and those sentenced having their properties and assets seized, we are learning that the sheer scope of the war was far more widespread than we ever expected, and that there were more deaths of Muggles than ever reported—many planned by Hermione herself, and never spoken of even at her trial or others. She herself was put on trial as potentially having been a double agent and for the deaths she was responsible for, but perhaps misplaced loyalty led all of them to speak on her behalf. To this day, those that are old enough to remember the scandal of her trial remember the intense and divisive feelings about her acquittal.

This manuscript reveals details of the war that, until now, were kept from the general public. There is certainly no doubt that Hermione (over the course of working on this manuscript I have come to feel as if I know her) was one of the main people responsible for the Order winning the war. However, that her loyalty was completely dedicated to the Order certainly can be questioned. Despite his atrocious actions, she loved him and claimed she did (despite her marriage to Viktor Krum) even on her deathbed. How she was capable of doing so escapes me, as her narrative reveals that You-Know-Who was far more of a monster than we ever knew. Perhaps it speaks of some amount of insanity on her behalf, to love an evil madman.

Her story cannot be looked at in a vacuum, so I have included documents that will shed more light on the whole truth of the situation—transcripts of the trials and interrogations, articles, diary entries, and many other things. Despite this _supposedly_ being her explaining the truth, documents I present reveal that not all she says within the narrative line up with evidence.

Is it to merely make herself look better or to hide her sinister intentions even in death? Readers, the answer to that is up to you.

Rita Skeeter

February 10th, 1999


	2. A Letter to My Loved Ones

AN: I do not own Harry Potter or anything related to it. This is merely fanfiction. There are no trigger warnings for this chapter.

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><p>To my lovely family,<p>

If you are reading this, then I have passed on and the contents of my will have been given out to all of you. I hope you enjoy my gifts to you. While I left this manuscript to Viktor, I am sure that all of you understand that this is for all of you to read. To begin, I would like to apologize for the fact that I was not brave enough to let you all read this manuscript during my lifetime. Many of you have asked over the years, some more explicitly than others, about my relationship with Tom and my silence has certainly caused some bitterness. I am sure that it has seemed like I was guilty and ashamed, and to some degree it was. However, shame has never been my main emotion concerning Tom.

It's never been because I was not willing to talk about it. It's quite the opposite, really. I have so many feelings and thoughts about that both wonderful and awful time in my life that I can't imagine just sitting down and somehow explaining it all. You'd be there for days, and I'd go hoarse even attempting too. Trying to verbalize it on the spot would leave it all jumbled and confused— and writing and organizing this book has been like trying to navigate a labyrinth. I am a logical person rather than emotional, and the depth of my feelings and how they painfully veered is far more difficult to articulate than arithmancy proofs or theoretical runeworking.

I was _painfully_ young during that time and my perspective and feelings on life have changed so much since that time, and I don't think anyone could ever deny that Tom was a master manipulator (and would not care if the object of his interest was not really emotionally ready to be in a relationship with an adult). However, even now, married and with grandchildren, I can't say that I don't love Tom. He was a horrible human being, but he was not a monster. No one more than I saw the most intimate, sensitive, and pained parts of him. I don't feel guilty for still loving him even today, though I also love you, Viktor, and have made my life with you for the past thirty-six wonderful years. My love for Tom has not made my love for you any less, and in the end I chose you over the painful knowledge of what had happened and what could have been with Tom. I hope this manuscript will shed a little light on why, and that your fears of my lack of love for you were unfounded.

This manuscript started out as an explanation for all of you. But, honestly, it has become therapeutic for me. I have been so demonized by the public for having been Tom's lover during the war, and writing it has been like lancing a wound and letting the poison bleed out. So while some of the more violent and sexual scenes are graphic, perhaps uncomfortably so for my family, I felt like it was necessary for my own healing. I hope you understand.

As I am gone, I wish to express now that I love all of you very much. I know that my involvement with Tom and the war has left ripples that have hurt all of us, but all of you have turned out far stronger and better than I could have ever expected. You have been the light of my lives, and all that I endured during the war was worth it in order to see my family be happy and flourish in an almost peaceful world.

Being with Tom made me think a lot about immortality for reasons you will read about later, and here is what I have concluded: even if I am gone, my feelings and memories with you will remain in your thoughts. So know my love will be with all of you forever. As long as you remember and care, I will never be far from you.

All my love,

Hermione Granger, Hermione Riddle, and Hermione Krum


	3. Historical Context

AN: I do not own Harry Potter, and this is merely fanfiction. There are no trigger warnings for this chapter.

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><p>I can't really tell you how I met Tom before putting things culturally and historically into context. I met Tom in 1956, my seventh year of Hogwarts, but things were dangerous in the wizarding world long before he began his post as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.<p>

He worked at Borgin and Burkes for two years saving money to travel, and after that Tom told me that he travelled the world for seven years, heading through France, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Germany, India, and more places that he did not tell me about. Tom returned to Britain in 1953 with the intention of permanently establishing himself in Britain and in the dark arts community. The Knights of Walpurgis had been created while he was still in Hogwarts, and by the time he returned they had been (by his instructions via letters) sowing the seeds for his rise to power. The Statue Protection Edict, passed in 1950, and the continual push for the Blood Status Registration Act was at his behest. They had also recruited several prominent dark arts practitioners to join their coven, and gained the loyalty of Antonin Dolohov (already infamous for being a member of Grindelwald's elite Edler Squad) and his skills in raising up Tom's movement.

While I call him Tom and refer to him as such—and always have to the public and all of you—to them he was Lord Voldemort, Britain's Dark Lord, and the most powerful one known to have existed. They feared him greatly and listened to his commands. He ruled with an iron fist but used his charisma and intuitive understanding of people to incite feelings of loyalty and hope. Tom worked very hard with each of his Knights that he associated with to feel like he took a special interest in their lives, ideas, and concerns over everyone else's.

Once Tom returned and saw that the Blood Status Registration Act was not likely to pass, he changed tactics. He began working to gain members in earnest, either willingly or by force, and the deaths of the family and friends of those who refused began, along his Dark Mark being seen in the sky. He began attacking muggleborns and known activists for blood status parity. It is a testament to Tom's genius, really, that he used his followers and a few imperiused blood parity activists to popularize the Registraction Act as a safety measure for those potentially targeted.

As I experienced it, at Hogwarts there was a great sense of fear. Tensions were still high about blood status, even ten years after Grindelwald's fall. There was a strong belief among blood purists that if Grindelwald had gained British aid in the war then it might not have been lost. They felt like their potential to fight for their rightful place in the heirarchy had been taken away from them. In Hogwarts, it meant that anyone muggleborn or "different" from what a wix was supposed to be—"blood traitors", those who were of different sexual orientations, and wix of different races and ethnicities—were targeted with great hate and gusto. Being both muggleborn and black, I was doubly disliked by my peers, especially in Ravenclaw, which was the second most bigoted house after Slytherin. I was essentially friendless (though I had acquaintances that occasionally associated with me) except for Viktor, who I met in fourth year during an exchange program to try and soothe tensions between Britain and the taken countries after the Grindelwald War. His fame and wealth, which made him a very sought-after beau, did not endear me to many of the female students of Hogwarts after we began going steady.

I was personally afraid for my family and myself. That I would be a target was not even a question, due to my race, blood status, and the fact that I outshined all of my other peers in grades, pureblood or otherwise. Each new attack in the paper made me more and more worried. As soon as I was able to cast magic outside of school, I warded my parent's home to try and delay attacks as much as possible.

One attack that stuck with me especially was the death of Ruth Pearson, who had been the muggleborn Head Girl two years ahead of me. She had been a lovely and kind girl with blonde hair and had married her fellow Head Boy. She had been pregnant with their first child when they attacked and mutilated the home, killing Ruth, her husband, and the parents of the couple. It had sent a ripple of deep horror throughout the wizarding community, and the Registration Act gained it's biggest upswing due to it. The effect it had on me was to constantly keep an eye on our home, ignoring my usual jaunts to a local ice cream parlor, and to try and ignore the sting and worry of my parent's dismissal of the issues going on in the wizarding world.

Then, in August 1955, the Registration Act was passed. On my seventeenth birthday I received a letter with my "security" details listed, including, much to my horror, my address, my parents' names, their occupations, and my grades list. I knew it was essentially an easy list to find muggleborns disguised as paternalistic protection.

However, a teenage girl can only spend so much time being worried about a looming but rather distant threat, and I had other concerns on my mind.


End file.
